Jan 11, 2015 | By Kira
Prepare to be mesmerized. Tulio Laanen, a first year student at the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts in the Netherlands, has 3D printed a flawless marble machine that is sure to make you stop and admire the machinery, at least for the first few times the ball makes its rounds.
Marble machines are often very intricate, complicated machinery toys that incorporate a series of gears, wheels, tunnels, and other parts (some stationary, some not) to move one or more marbles through a pre-designated loop.
Once completed, they aren't the most entertaining of toys. Other that being cool to look at, there's nothing you can really do. But the real fun lies in creating the marble machine, deciding where the marble will go and how it will get there. Thanks to Tulio's perfected 3D design, which is available in STL format on the Makerbot Thingiverse, anyone can create their own marble machine, and hopefully be inspired to tweak and add on to it to make it more and more complex.
While the machinery may appear relatively simple at first glance, it is clear that a lot of planning and tweaking had to go into the design process. As the video shows, the marble starts at the top of a winding slide. At the bottom, it is picked up by a perforated wheel that is manually rotated by a series of gears, and which lifts the marble back up to the top of the slide. Here, the entire process starts all over again and continues so long as you keep turning the gears.
The marble in question is a chrome steel ball, used for ball bearings, with a diameter of 3.175 mm, and he used an Ultimaker 2 to bring his design to life.
Tulio had previously created two wooden marble machines, each slightly more complex than the 3D printed version, but he admits that this is his first 3D printing project. With more time and experience, who knows what kind of complex, head-scratching marble machine he could come up with next?
In addition to dabbling in marble machinery and 3D printing, the ambitious young creator studies art and design and plans on becoming a film-score composer.
Two wooden marble machines:
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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can you please make me one, need it for a school project!! :D
Ankita wrote at 5/15/2015 8:53:43 AM:
Complex but beautiful Designs.......
Peter wrote at 1/11/2015 7:15:57 PM:
Great model, but it can be controlled thru smartphone with #rcbrick https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/770971124/rc-brick
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